I'm trying to create a template for A4 portrait layout user manuals. The basic page layout will be 2 column text, only using single column text for pages with screenshots or other large images.

The problem I'm facing is that I want the default between-column spacing to be 1 cm, not Word's default of 1.27 cm. I can change the spacing to 1 cm easily in the columns dialog, but I can't work out how to make that the new default whenever the columns dialog is reinvoked.



I start with the whole document being 2-column text with 1 cm between-column spacing. Then I select a large chunk of text and convert it to single column. Then maybe I decide I want some of that to be 2-column after all, so I open the columns dialog again, only to find the default column spacing is back to 1.27 cm.

That wouldn't be a problem, except that this document will become a template that other people will use, and they might not know to keep changing between-column spacing back to 1 cm. So I need to change the default, at least for this document and others based on it. But how? I can't see any option on Page Setup like the ones to change default margins.

You can't change the default, but you could record a macro to both apply the two-column layout and set the inter-column spacing to 1cm.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]